Illusions and Disillusionment: Santayana, Narrative, and Self-Knowledge

The ability and even the need to engage in storytelling has long been recognized as an important factor in human life; it can both unite members of a group under a cohesive narrative and provide individuals with a unique sense of identity as they define their particular place within a social schema. Narrative, then, can be seen to play a sort of adaptive role: the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we fit in help us to navigate through a wildly complex social scene and to retain our sense of personal distinction within that public sphere. Furthermore, reflection on these narratives can aid us in self-knowledge, in charting a course toward a more mature account of ourselves both as individuals and as members of a species functioning within the greater workings of nature. With self-knowledge we hope to achieve a greater harmony with existence and a sense of well-being on our personal path through life.

There are many philosophical angles by way of which to address the topic of narrative and self-knowledge, but the one that fascinates me at present is the problem of how to ascribe a function to something as formal and immaterial as narrative while maintaining an epiphenomenal account of consciousness. If consciousness is epiphenomenal, it cannot possess or employ any causal force in the physical realm, a realm that includes the material consciousness-producing organism itself. And yet, the symbolic aspect of human thought is held, even by some materialists, to be the adaptive function sine qua non of human beings. The questions remain: What can it mean for epiphenomenal consciousness to serve a function? If we accept that it does, why specifically is self-knowledge so beneficial to the human organism? And finally, why does in-sight help us learn about and adapt to life as much as do our scientific accounts of our exterior biological being?

George Santayana is among those who have profoundly considered the significance of this problem. His conception of self-knowledge as an aesthetic and moral account of one's life can be viewed as a reflection on a narrative that performs an adaptive function. It amounts to a spiritual insight that harmonizes subjective life into a coherent tale and concurrently reconciles the psychic being with its equally material environs (Santayana 1942, 568; hereafter RB). Described as such, Santayana's notion of self-knowledge is highly consonant with the aims of psychoanalysis. In addition to the fact that both pursuits recognize the liberating possibilities of insight, both share the ontological view that consciousness is an intangible surface atop an unconscious material apparatus called the psyche. Furthermore, despite this epiphenomenal characterization, both Santayana and psychoanalytic theory see consciousness as serving a function on behalf of the psychic organism. Finally, both recognize the paradoxical fact that while consciousness and the unconscious are in principle irreconcilable aspects of existence, consciousness is nonetheless our only route to any self-understanding. ² With this in mind, it will be fruitful to my consideration of the aforementioned three questions to put Santayana's notion of aesthetic self-knowledge into dialogue with relevant aspects of depth psychologies like psychoanalysis and its variants. This combination of philosophical and psychological approaches can help us consider not only what Santayana may have meant by the harmonizing possibilities of self-knowledge, but also the complexity of the claim that something as incorporeal as narrative (to say nothing of the conscious reflection on that narrative) could practically affect a material organism.

The larger issue at hand is the explanation of and justification for the general function of consciousness; in other words, how it is that interiority should even emerge as an element in service of organismic life. Not only is this topic too broad in scope for my present concerns, but many argue—Santayana among them—that, in principle, the problem cannot be solved...